


The Guy

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [51]
Category: Kings (TV 2009), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 05:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7744777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Marvel Cinematic Universe/Kings, Bucky Barnes +/ Jack Benjamin, searching for a place to call home."</p><p>Jack finds Bucky while he's on the run, and together they find their way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Guy

Jack found the guy in a club one night. Some Gilboan intelligence officers had tracked him through Gath and across Eurasia to Asia proper. Jack knew he was taking a risk, with his pale skin in the crowded streets of Shanghai, but it was a cosmopolitan enough city that no one was suspicious of him. For him to charm his way into a club with barely enough to make the cover fee was also easy there. In the grand scheme of things, Gilboa wasn’t a large and powerful country, but Jack could still turn on the princely charisma when he needed it. He was just notorious enough that he looked familiar to the bouncer, who assumed he was some D-list celebrity, and Jack was in, mingling on the dance floor.  
  
Then he saw the guy, lingering on the edge of the dance floor. He was struck by the emptiness in the guy’s eyes. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d have thought the guy was drugged out of his gourd, but he was holding so still, and Jack recognized the soldier alertness in him.   
  
It wasn’t till fifteen minutes later, after two crowds of intelligence officers - some shouting in Gilboan, others shouting in German and Russian - crashed the club and Jack made for the nearest exit that he realized: the guy looked just like him.  
  
Thinner in the face, haggard, with straggly long hair and deep shadows around his eyes, broader across the shoulders, much more muscular, but in the fine details - the shape of his mouth, his chin, the color of his eyes - they were the same. Could’ve been twins. (As if Jack needed another one.)  
  
They had similar thought patterns, at any rate, taking the same escape route from the club. Making for the same crowded street. The guy shucked his clothes as he went, shirt and jacket and hat, and unholy Abbadon, the guy had a metal arm, but then he was yanking on a new shirt and a new jacket and a knit watch cap instead of a baseball cap, and damn that was smart.  
  
Jack shed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and wished he had a hat.  
  
They must have distracted each other too much - Jack could feel the guy watching him, assessing him - because they turned down an alley that was already crowded with soldiers from both groups of pursuers, all in olive uniforms, some with the Gilboan monarch butterfly on their sleeves, some with the Russian red star.  
  
Jack swore and backpedaled, he and the guy skedaddled down another alley, and it was full of people, and he knew the soldiers pursuing him wouldn’t care about collateral damage.  
  
Jack swore again when the guy turned, caught him, shoved him against the wall. Jack brought his fists up to strike, and then the guy was kissing him. It was a brutal, painful kiss, but the guy crowded close and braced his hands on the wall on either side of Jack’s head, and Jack knew enough German and Russian to understand when the soldiers muttered _damn fags_ and moved along.  
  
And like that, Jack had an ally.  
  
“Thanks for the save,” Jack said. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Weapons don’t have names.”   
  
Okay, that wasn't at all creepy. “Well, I have to call you something.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“If we’re going to hit the road together, we’re going to be talking at least a little bit. So, weapon, what’s your name?”  
  
The guy blinked at him.  
  
“Do you even have a make and model?” Belatedly, Jack realized how insensitive that sounded. Usually he was more careful about what came out of his mouth.  
  
“I am The Asset. I am the Winter Soldier.”  
  
“Winter, then. Pleased to meet you. I’m Jack.”  
  
“Jack,” Winter repeated. “Why are we hitting the road together?”  
  
“Because,” Jack said, “we can be useful to each other.”  
  
Winter prodded Jack with his metal hand, and okay, ow. “What use have I for a mere human?”  
  
“Not just a mere human,” Jack said. “Major Jonathan Benjamin, formerly of the Gilboan Army. Let me show you why I’m useful.” He caught Winter by the wrist and tugged him into the crowd in the alley, kept pressed close to his side. A few smiles, a few artfully-timed kisses, and some drunken, stoned hotel heiress invited them back to her penthouse suite.  
  
She passed out soon after they arrived, so Jack arranged her on the bed, then called down for room service.  
  
“What are we doing here?” Winter asked.  
  
“We need food, don’t we? And a chance to wash up. Staying clean is important. We want to blend in. You shower first. I’ll handle the room service guys when they get here.”  
  
Winter eyed him warily, then stripped off his clothes and marched into the bathroom.

Yeah, Jack would have to put in a lot of time in a gym if he ever hoped to look that ripped. Also, he’d have to handle all the human interaction, because Winter, as good-looking and strong as he was, had obviously been dropped on his head as a child.  
  
Someone who considered himself a weapon was probably unhinged, and Jack knew the reputation the Russians had for human experimentation, but Winter would be useful, and Jack wanted to stay alive.   
  
He needed to find somewhere no one would look for him. America was a huge country, and there were so many small towns where a man could get lost. As long as he was pleasant and fit in and didn’t make waves, no one would find him. And if he had Winter along, told everyone he was a vet with PTSD, they’d have a little sympathy going for them. As long as Winter didn’t do anything too crazy and dangerous.  
  
Once Winter cleaned up, the resemblance between him and Jack was downright uncanny. It’d help the brother angle for sure. Jack tipped the room service guy with some cash and wheeled the food into the room, then went to take a shower himself. When he got out of the shower, Winter had eaten precisely one half of the food. Jack had ordered burgers and fries, and he was pretty sure Winter had counted up the fries and divvied them into two piles on either plate. Winter sat statue-still, waiting while Jack ate.  
  
Most of his responses to Jack’s inquiries were along the same vein - a weapon has no parents, a weapon has no friends, a weapon has no hobbies. They’d have to work on that kind of talk, when they were out and about with people.  
  
But for now, if Winter kept his mouth shut and just did what Jack told him to, they’d be fine.  
  
After crashing with the heiress till she woke, hungover and asking what kind of threesome fun they’d had, Jack worked his way through the same club where they’d found her. He managed to charm his way back to several hotels, scoring more showers and food, mostly by being flirty with Winter, who accepted his touches and kisses well enough. The biggest score was when Jack talked his way into a high-stakes poker game and managed to win enough cash for two plane tickets to America.  
  
It was Winter, though, who proved the most useful when it came to getting new papers. He slipped out of the hotel they were crashing at one night, and he returned just before sunrise with new papers.  
  
Winter, beneath his silence and staring, had a sense of humor, because the papers were for Jack and Winter Frost, twins, from a place called Toquerville in Utah.   
  
After one last sweep of a club for another dose of cash, Jack bought them plane tickets, and then they were skyward.  
  
Winter took first watch on the plane, speaking to no one, scanning the faces around them, wary for threats, and Jack slept. Winter woke him precisely halfway through the flight, and it was Jack’s turn to be on watch.  
  
They touched down in Los Angeles, and it was obvious that the massive crowds made Winter nervous - which was interesting, because it was more crowded in Shanghai - but Winter seemed...more confident now that they were in America. Was he American? Or had he been intended for operations on American soil? Because Jack could remember the Russian and German coming from their pursuers back in Shanghai.  
  
While Jack had been raised in the lap of luxury, he’d taken his knocks as a soldier, and he knew how to rough it, but Winter was more conversant in getting around. He had zero qualms about picking pockets, and he bought them bus tickets to Utah. But not to Toquerville. To a smaller town, called Kanarraville.  
  
“There’s a pirate joke in there somewhere,” Jack said.  
  
Winter glanced at him, and though his expression remained blank, Jack was sure there was amusement in his eyes.  
  
Jack expected they’d have to stay at the only motel in town until they found somewhere to live - and they passed plenty of houses for sale or for rent on their stroll through said town - but Winter made a beeline for a rundown house.  
  
“We are not staying here,” Jack said. “It’s - it’s basically condemned.”

Winter dropped his backpack and crossed the weed-riddled lawn and heaved aside a massive cement slab with genuinely inhuman strength, and dammit, that was exactly the kind of thing the neighbors weren’t supposed to see. But he came back with a toolbox, which he opened. He handed Jack a hammer and a miniature crowbar and said, “We’re fixing it.”  
  
And fix it they did. In addition to the toolbox, Winter had a stash of cash, and they used it to buy camping supplies and construction supplies. The older couple who lived next door let Winter borrow the old man’s power tools and other tools, and they sent their daughter over with shares of homemade casserole. Said daughter watched Jack’s inept hammering technique and sighed.  
  
“Go, help Winter with cutting the boards. I got this.”  
  
“But -”  
  
“It physically pains me to watch you do this. Now go.”  
  
Jack had no idea how Winter had known about this house, how he’d had money and tools and was prepared to fix it up, but he played along as Winter’s younger, more helpless brother, the social one where Winter was the surly, strong one, and the neighbors just accepted them. No questions. Just homemade cookies and lemonade on hot days and invitations to neighborhood barbecues.  
  
After three months, the exterior of the house was livable, so they could stop camping on the lawn.  
  
Jack listened to the way the old man talked to Winter about how things were coming along on the house, and he learned that the house had belonged to the Frost family for generations and that Winter’s father and grandfather had done their best to keep the thing running, but military service hadn’t treated them so well, and between Winter’s grandfather and father, Winter and Jack were the only ones who’d finally made it back to fix the place up.  
  
“You boys look just like your daddy and granddaddy,” the old man said, clapping Jack on the shoulder. “Shame about what happened to them. But it’s good that you all came home.”  
  
Sometimes Winter cried out in the night, terror and fury in Russian and a dozen other languages. Sometimes English. But usually not. On those nights, he’d get up and walk the perimeter, restless and wary.  
  
Jack pretended not to notice.  
  
Winter pretended Jack didn’t have nightmares of his own.  
  
In another three months, they had the inside fixed up and livable, and together they hit up YouTube to learn about making furniture. Luckily for them, the old man next door was a hobby carpenter of good skill, and he was glad to pass his skills on to them, because heaven knew none of this children were interested, none save his youngest daughter, and he was waiting for her to finish college and get married - if any man would have her (and that the old man would be more than approving of either Winter or Jack marrying into the family was unspoken but always an undercurrent to those discussions).  
  
Winter and Jack had a home in time for Christmas. Jack was actually contemplating decorating the place - Winter cared little for holidays, it seemed - and was wondering what he’d do to fill his time now that the house wasn’t just a rotting pile of timber when he was accosted at the general store. He almost dropped the box of fairy lights he was holding because he was being crushed in a hug by a veritable blond god of a man.  
  
“Bucky,” the man breathed. “It’s true. You’re alive. You’re safe.”  
  
“Sorry,” Jack said, “but I think you have the wrong guy.”  
  
Only the man cupped his hands around Jack’s face and gazed at him so lovingly that Jack wished, fiercely, that he was the right guy.  
  
“Bucky,” the man said, “it’s me. Steve. You - you can come home now. You’re not a weapon anymore.”  
  
And that was how Jack lost the guy. He extricated himself from Steve’s grip and said, “You’ve got the wrong guy - but I know where the right one is.”  
  
(He still had a home, though. Bucky went back to New York with Steve, but they came to visit sometimes, and one time, they brought their friend Sam with them.)


End file.
